Features (All)

Anne Arundel County Public Library’s
new administrator, Skip Auld,
is learning to pull dollars
out of thin air

Skip Auld will have to be a magician to pull all he wants out of Anne Arundel County Public Library’s incredible shrinking budget.
Anne Arundel was a big step up for Auld, who came here in early November from running the Durham County public library system, about half the size of Anne Arundel County, in North Carolina.
...

You’ve probably heard of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the assumption that anyone can be linked to the actor through six steps … like my sister worked for a man whose wife is the third cousin of Bacon’s hairdresser.
We can go one better with Six Degrees of GCH Foxcliffe Hickory Wind.
Who?
...

On a recent blustery day, a thunderous crack and immediate darkness in the kitchen alerted me to a wayward limb obstructing the power lines.
Dangling from our power lines and blocking our road was the top half of a neighbor’s pine tree.
We should call someone, the gathering of alarmed neighbors agreed.
...

For her 10th birthday, Maggie Strandquist asked her guests to help her help animals in need

For the big One-Oh, Maggie Strandquist of Arnold said no to presents for herself and yes to presents for the animals at the SPCA of Anne Arundel County.
“I didn’t think I needed anything, so I thought who else needed things,” Maggie reports. “I love animals and really wanted to help them, so I thought of the SPCA.”
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Six Chesapeake volunteers tell how the 50-year-old Peace Corps changed their lives

Walking through Gaziantep, Turkey, meant keeping an eye on any young man walking toward me. At the instant he was about to bump me, I did a quick sidestep. In that conservative eastern country 45 years ago, this was nothing to worry about: just a young man’s trick. My sidestep was one small adjustment Peace Corps volunteers make to live by the rules of a foreign culture.
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With Chesapeake Bay the striped bass nursery of the Atlantic, our actions have an impact far beyond Maryland shores

Jerome Collier of Severna Park has initiated an online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/yrrejmaj) to halt the use of gill nets. Collier says his goal is not to stop commercial fishing but to urge Maryland Department of Natural Resources to shift this rockfish allocation to a more manageable method of harvesting.
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In his fifth book, Family of Freedom, Chesapeake Neighbor Ken Walsh introduces us to Presidents and their African American servants in the White House

To keep up with presidents, you have to share their drive and stamina. Understand that, and you are getting to know Ken Walsh, one of the shrinking corps of reporters whose job is telling the rest of us about the plans, plots and policies of the occupants of the White House.
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Eleven-year-old Kwame and 9-year-old Kojo celebrated their birthdays with cupcakes. As part of Georgetown Cupcakes’ reality show on TLC, DC Cupcakes, the sister-owned business, delivered a giant gorilla sculpture, comprised of cupcakes, to the National Zoo where the two male western lowland gorillas were celebrating their big days.
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In honor of Black History Month, Bay Weekly tracks down unsung African Americans behind some street signs.
In our capital, many streets are footprints for the African American communities that developed in the late 1800s.
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In lean times, two Annapolis black history memorials win much-needed state support

In these times of withered wallets and skeletal budgets, African-American history has scored in state money. Two Annapolis landmarks — the Alex Haley-Kunta Kinte Memorial at City Dock and the Maynard-Burgess House on Duke of Gloucester Street — are slated for money toward renovations and repairs....